Install Linux from USB Device or Boot into Live Mode Using Unetbootin and dd Command

Installing Linux from a USB mass storage device or logging into Live Linux Environment is a cool Idea. Booting from a USB mass storage device is sometimes necessary, especially when the ROM media device is not working. Booting Windows from a USB mass storage device is not difficult, and with the availability of various software it has been just a few clicks away. Booting into a windows machine requires only three files, namely boo.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com. But booting into a Linux machine is a complex process which requires a whole lot of files and process in well defined execution manner. The booting process is complex but creating a boot-able usb media is very interactive and fun.

We will be creating USB boot-able image in two different way

Unetbootin (An Open Source Project, freely available)

dd (Data Description)

For creating a Usb boot-able image, certain basic requirements are:

Usb Mass Storage Device (Pen Drive)

Linux Image in CD/DVD/ISO or Internet connection (Not recommended for large images)

Windows/Linux Platform

Let us start with Unetbootin

Use Apt/Yum to get the required Unetbootin package or download the tar-ball from the below link for your platform.

Insert Your USB pen-drive into the Windows/Linux machine and Launch Unetbootin, you will be greeted with a windows similar to.

Check the content above the red line. Type should be Usb Device, strictly and if more than one usb device is plugged in you need to know the name of exact Usb device you need to work upon. A wrong selection will lead to wipe your hard disk, so be aware. You can browse to the stored disk image on your hard drive, from the Unetbootin window.

Or alternatively download from the internet, in real time. Although it is a time taking process and may result into error, when larger image is downloaded.

Click OK, and the process of downloading and/or extracting image will start. It will take time depending upon the size of download and/or the file size of ISO image. Once completed, click ‘exit‘.

Plug out the usb storage device safely and plug it into the machine you want to boot. Restart it and set that usb storage device to boot first from the BIOS menu which may be F12, F8, F2 or Del depending upon you machine and build.

You will be greeted with a window as below, from where you can boot into Live Linux Mode and/or Install on Hard Disk from there, directly.

Pros of using Unetbootin

Most of the processing is automated.

Easy to use.

Make it possible to create boot-able stick from windows/Linux.

Cons of using Unetbootin

One wrong selection of disk and all your Data and Installation on primary HDD is wiped.

Creating Boot-able USB Device using dd Command

dd command originally was a part of UNIX, which is implemented in Linux. The dd command is capable of striping headers, extracting parts of binary files. It is used by the Linux kernel Makefiles to make boot images.

The basic syntax of dd command is

dd if=<source> of=<target> bs=<byte size>; sync

The bite Size is generally “some power of 2, and usually not less than 512 bytes i.e., 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, but can be any reasonable whole integer value.

sync option allows you to copy everything using synchronized I/O.

Run the below command with modification depending upon your source and destination.

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How can multiple ISOs be put into a single flash drive so they are available during boot time?
for e.g. latest Debian Linux (codenamed”Jessie”) comes in 13 DVD iso files (of which first three are of importance to me). If we install from DVD there is a prompt to replace DVD completed when done. How to modify your command

dd if= of= bs=; sync

so that, 3 DVDs roughly of size 4GB each can be accommodated sequentially (or packages in appropriate folder /whatever works) in One flash drive of appropriate size ~ 16 GB.

Thanks Ravi. I did find that tool and it worked perfectly. My goal was to create a dual boot system with Windows Server 2012 and Suse Server….not there yet, but a step in the right direction Server 2012 is installed, doesnt recognize the Linux OS as a boot option.

Hi I have a problem with Cinnamon 17.3 I have upgraded some files as stated in Synaptic and the result is the whole system is failed. It does not recognize my password. I want to go back to before I upgraded version. How can I do that I don’t know. Need help. Thanks.

I am afraid, that you already screwed up and you already have newer versions of most of the packages, so even if you try to remove them it will still hold to keep the new versions, so better option is to backup and reinstall.